Quick introduction: What’s wrong with CBC captioning?

CBC has to caption every second of its broadcasts on CBC Television and Newsworld...

A deaf person, Henry Vlug, filed a human-rights complaint about missing and inadequate captioning – and won. Starting in November 2002, CBC claimed to comply with that decision by captioning everything on CBC TV and Newsworld

...but they aren’t captioning everything

For three years, I watched CBC and took notes. I found well over a hundred cases where captioning was missing or inadequate

I published my results, which seemed to be taken seriously

In November 2005, I published my findings. The Canadian Human Rights Commission forwarded my findings to CBC, which eventually sent me two letters in response

CBC conceded all my points about missing captioning...

CBC agreed that all the kinds of captioning errors I found had happened or could have happened, and claimed to be tightening up its procedures.

...but CBC sounded defensive and angry on other points

CBC claimed that subtitled movies don’t need to be captioned (even though sound effects are never subtitled), that scrollup captioning was just fine for dramas and comedies, and that real-time captioning really could be used for programs that aren’t live. And they angrily defended themselves, using terms like disagree strenuously and dispute... vehemently

Then the Human Rights Commission tried to scuttle the case

My lawyer used the word “complaint” in a letter to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which seized on it and made it sound like there was never a complaint in process and I’d have to file one from scratch. Basically, the Human Rights Commission tried to cancel its own investigation

And CBC captioning hasn’t really improved

None of the different kinds of captioning errors and omissions I found have been rectified. Nothing has been completely fixed. (I’m still taking notes, and now I publish my results regularly)

If CBC can’t maintain 100% accessibility, who can?

If a public broadcaster cannot maintain a legal requirement to provide 100% captioning, what hope do we have for 100% captioning anywhere? Why would private broadcasters, who will do anything to save a penny, put in any extra effort to attain 100% captioning? What hope do we have for audio description for the blind on most, or all, programming?